Do you farm or ranch and want to make improvements to the land that you own or lease?
Natural Resources Conservation Service offers technical and financial assistance to help farmers, ranchers and forest landowners.
To get started with NRCS,
we recommend you stop by
your local NRCS field office.
We’ll discuss your vision for your land.
NRCS provides landowners with free technical assistance, or
advice, for their land. Common technical assistance includes:
resource assessment, practice design and resource monitoring.
Your conservation planner will help you determine if financial
assistance is right for you. Please keep in mind that financial
assistance is paid when work is complete.
We’ll walk you through the
application process. To get
started on applying for
financial assistance, we’ll work with you:
• To fill out an AD 1026, which ensures a conservation
plan is in place before lands with highly erodible soils
are farmed. It also ensures no wetland areas are farmed.
• To meet other eligibility certifications.
Once complete, we’ll work with you on the application,
or CPA 1200.
Applications for most programs are accepted on a continuous
basis, but they’re considered for funding in different ranking
periods. Be sure to ask your local NRCS district conservationist
about the deadline for the ranking period to ensure you turn
in your application in time.
USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.

To find out more, go to:

As part of the application
process, we’ll make sure
you are eligible.
To do this, you’ll need to bring:
• An official tax ID (Social Security number or an
employer ID)
• A property deed or lease agreement to show you
have control of the property; and
• A farm tract number.
If you don’t have a farm tract number, you can get one from
USDA’s Farm Service Agency. Typically, the local FSA office
is located in the same building as the local NRCS office. You
only need a farm tract number if you’re interested in financial
assistance.
NRCS will take a look at the
applications and rank them
according to local resource
concerns, the amount of conservation benefits the work will
provide and the needs of applicants.
If you’re selected, you can choose
whether to sign the contract for
the work to be done.
Once you sign the contract, you’ll be provided standards and specifications for completing the practice or practices, and then you
will have a specified amount of time to implement. Once the work
is implemented and inspected, you’ll be paid the rate of compensation for the work if it meets NRCS standards and specifications.